Our marketing and strategy key learnings from working with B2C & B2B clients
Here at After Digital, it is important to us that we lead from the front when it comes to digital innovations affecting our clients. That's why we think it's crucial to review our previous work. With each client we work with, we gain more knowledge and insight that helps us develop as a company and produce better outcomes.
Following on from our last blog, which covered the lessons learned from working with clients in the arts and culture sector, in this blog we want to delve into the lessons we’ve learned with our marketing and strategy clients; namely our work with B2B and B2C businesses.
Most recently, we’ve learnt -
The importance of approaching digital marketing with a reliance on the data; from setting up integrations correctly to harnessing data to improve results.
The importance of evolving digitally and approaching everything with a fresh, digital perspective—no matter the industry.
Boom saloon: A lesson in functionality
Non-profit creative organisation, boom saloon, came to us for advice on launching the fifth issue of their magazine—needing help with promoting it via paid social media on a small budget. As an agency deeply rooted in the arts and culture industry, we rarely pass up the opportunity to offer our help and expertise to others involved in the sector and, with this in mind, we decided to offer boom saloon our paid social media management services pro bono.
Throughout our short few months helping boom saloon, we were able to really shine a light on the importance of having full tracking set up on Facebook, Instagram and by extension, Google Analytics—especially if running ads—to increase the functionality of the accounts. In short, though Google Analytics was set up and there was a Facebook Business Manager ready, key elements of each platform were missing; there was no Facebook Pixel set up, there was no e-commerce or goal tracking implemented through Google Analytics, and no catalogues or Shops had been successfully set up through Facebook and Instagram.
With boom saloon being a non-profit organisation, and the site and social media accounts being set up and managed by a very small team, we were aware that any integrations or set up for enhanced reporting or campaign functionality would have to be ones that could be done cost-effectively and without the input from a developer. On top of that, they would also have to be solutions that could be managed by the team once our agreement had ended. This meant researching and choosing plugins and solutions that would fit specifically with their WordPress site and Woocommerce integration.
During the implementation of these solutions for this client, we learned the importance of having all of this functionality in place ahead of launching a campaign or series of ads. By identifying gaps in their digital and social media set up, and closing them, we were able to kick off the campaigns with all necessary technical elements in place. This removed the risk of lost data or inaccurate reporting, and boom saloon was fully set up for streamlined data collection and analysis.Plus, this functionality would be in place even after our pro-bono agreement ended.
Formex Swiss Watches: A lesson in retargeting
Formex Swiss Watches came to us looking for a digital partner to help their team build a stronger online presence and drive revenue via their new website. Since then, our team of marketing experts have worked on social media advertising and paid search campaigns to reach the client’s goals. However, as a luxury watch retailer, it quickly became clear that customers for their products would have far longer conversion paths than that of a regular retail consumer.
Working on this client’s account highlighted the importance of remarketing and encouraging potential customers down a sales funnel; though this is important for all marketing clients, the long conversion window for this client truly brought retargeting and cross-channel marketing to the forefront.
Using social media advertising, we were able to build up large top-level audiences; people who signed up to their newsletter, viewed instant experience ads, watched videos, and initial web traffic from niche but cold audiences. Filling the top of the funnel with retargetable audiences, created initial engagement with the Formex brand and led to a growth in awareness; warming the audience to who they are as a brand and what they have to offer. However, this also allowed us to use a variety of retargeting formats to continue to reach out to these engaged audiences at key points, driving them further down the funnel and closer to the end-goal of a purchase. In addition, as their chosen e-commerce platform was Shopify, we were easily able to integrate Formex’s catalogue of products with Facebook, enabling the use of dynamic ad formats. This format served each viewer of the ad with a unique selection of products which are chosen based on actions taken on the Formex site—delivering consistently high levels of engagement for the brand.
And, as traffic increased via other channels, like social media and organic search, off the back of this increased brand awareness, our cross-channel marketing was fully able to come into play. The use of Google Shopping formed a core part of our e-commerce strategy, as this allowed us to directly advertise Formex products to those who search for them—the use of this PPC feature has been, and continues to be, key for Formex and is used on an ongoing basis. On top of this, by using Smart Shopping display (and display remarketing) we underpin the overall marketing strategy by retargeting those who did not convert on the first visit.
Gazprom: A lesson in change
Utility company, Gazprom, came to us keen to make use of digital, like many in the B2C market have already. Paperless account maintenance, automation, and personalisation were all at the forefront of Gazprom’s brief—all whilst optimising their customer service. However, as a B2B business that has contracts with longer life cycles, switching was low and business often came through brokers rather than engagement with Gazprom directly. Despite this, the company was keen to evolve and make a change to be more digitally-minded.
Through our research, we found that the utility industry was heavily regulated, leading to a disconnect from the fast-paced changes of the digital landscape. We also found they had a vast range of customers, to which they wanted to connect with more directly.
During Discovery, we identified issues by viewing challenges that were occurring from the customer's perspective, not the businesses. It became clear that customers were already facing a myriad of issues around billing, payments, and a limited customer portal; meaning that it was difficult for users to resolve issues themselves without contacting Gazprom. This led to long wait times for responses both via phone and email; resulting in many disgruntled customers who relied on Gazprom Energy to run their businesses. Overall, this meant a lot of time and resource was being spent dealing with these enquiries.
In order to build out the roadmap for Gazprom’s digital evolution, we conducted a week-long discovery with Gazprom Energy, meeting and listening to over 60 individuals across the business, including members of staff from: IT, sales & marketing, trading, customer support, administration and senior management. We spread our discovery sessions over 8 intense workshops at their headquarters in Manchester and were met with a real sense of desire for change and enthusiasm around what opportunities lay ahead. Our key findings were:
Compliance doesn’t mean doing it the same way as always.
Prevention is better than the cure, and in turn, creates a better customer experience
It’s much more efficient to maintain existing customers, rather than chase new leads.
Having good systems and data is a critical enabler for many of the solutions discussed.
Following the workshops, the strategy team collated their findings. Throughout all of our discussions, a quote from their CEO, Kurt Bligaard Pedersen, stood out: “Our business starts with the customer, not the machine.”
From that, we decided to use this customer journey as a vehicle to build the roadmap on, covering all aspects of the customer life-cycle; from acquisition, through to account management and renewals. With the customer being the focal point for our recommendations, it ensured that any changes being undertaken had a point of reference and reason for the change.
In short, our work with Gazprom had many facets not mentioned here. But, it was a lesson that showed us how change can come in many forms and that, despite being part of a heavily regulated industry, Gazprom was still able to evolve within those regulations in a way that put their customer first. This was aided through the transparency and support of the internal team involved which is key to any digital transformation project. Overall, the process allowed us to deliver a multi-year roadmap, backed by recommendations that would support the resolution of all four of our key findings.
Working with a wide range of industries allows us to broaden our understanding of the digital challenges affecting different types of businesses. We learned that clients sometimes need to update digital processes to stay ahead of competitors and remain at the forefront of consumers' minds. Also, it is important for our clients to have as much data as possible to retarget their consumers effectively and convert engagement into sales. Additionally, it’s vital that our clients benefit from the functionality of the programs they use so they can maintain content and gather data to understand what works for them. Want to read more about learnings like these? Check out our blog about the key learnings from our work in the arts and culture industry here.